ray tracing

Intel announced on Monday that it will be presenting a paper at Siggraph 2008 about its "many-core" Larrabee architecture, which will be the basis of future Intel graphics processors.

The paper itself, however, has already been published, and I was able to get a copy of it. (Unfortunately, as you'll see at that link, the paper is normally available only to members of the Association for Computing Machinery.)

The paper is a pretty thorough summary of Intel's motives for developing Larrabee and the major features of the new architecture. Basically, Larrabee is about using many simple x86 cores--more than you'd see in the central processor (CPU) of the system--to implement a graphics processor (GPU). This concept has received a lot of attention since Intel first started talking about it last year.

… Read more

Brighter, crisper images are the goal for top Intel researchers in their work on future graphics technology.

I talked Wednesday with Intel's Jerry Bautista, the co-director of the Tera-scale computing research program, and Daniel Pohl, an Intel researcher. I focused mostly on a concept called ray tracing but also questioned them about Intel's upcoming Larrabee processor.

First, some background. Ray tracing--whether you agree or disagree about its viability--has been a fairly hot topic. It has been mentioned frequently by Intel over the last six months. An Intel blog titled "Real Time Ray-Tracing: The End of Rasterization?" and later comments by Intel executives that the company is looking at doing ray tracing on its processors set the stage for debate on the viability of ray tracing in mainstream gaming.

Ray tracing is a technique for rendering three-dimensional graphics using complex light interactions, allowing the creation of extremely detailed reflective surfaces, for example, with stunning photorealistic results.

In the future, ray tracing may compete with today's traditional raster-based graphics used in games running on Nvidia and AMD-ATI graphics processors. Intel claims ray tracing runs better on general-purpose processors, such as its Core 2 Quad processors, than on traditional graphics processors. Ray tracing may also run on future processors such as Larrabee.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini alluded to this at a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Strategic Decisions Conference last month. Asked who Intel's major future competitors are, Otellini responded, "In graphics, as we move up the food chain, we're bouncing into ATI via AMD and Nvidia more than we used to. And I don't expect that to abate anytime soon." … Read more

Dean Takahashi sent me an e-mail pointing to a piece he wrote on VentureBeat describing statements Wednesday by Intel's Chief Technical Officer Justin Rattner targeted at NVIDIA. CNET's own Brooke Crothers covered the same story and provides additional background here.

The technology at issue relates to 3D graphics for PCs. All current PC graphics chips use what's called polygon-order rendering. All of the polygons that make up the objects to be displayed are processed one at a time. The graphics chip figures out where each polygon should appear on the screen and how much of it will be visible or obstructed by other polygons.

Ray tracing achieves similar results by working through each pixel on the screen, firing off a "ray" (like a backward ray of light) that bounces off the polygons until it reaches a light source in the scene. Ray tracing produces natural lighting effects but takes a lot more work.

(That's the short version, anyway. For more details, you could dig up a copy of my 1997 book Beyond Conventional 3D. Alas, the book is long since out of print.)

Ray tracing is easily implemented in software on a general-purpose CPU, and indeed, most of the computer graphics you see in movies and TV commercials are generated this way, using rooms full of PCs or blade-server systems.

Naturally, Intel loves ray tracing, and there are people at Intel working to… Read more

Intel issued a statement about USB 3.0, a subject threatening to cause a full-blown controversy among several chipmakers. The company also said it would present a paper on its upcoming "Larrabee" graphics technology in August.

The Intel statement on USB 3.0 is meant to clarify the difference between the basic USB specification and the "host controller specification"--the latter a point of dispute with rivals Advanced Micro Devices and Nvidia. The statement also tries to dispel rumors that Intel is "holding back the specification" from others in the industry.

AMD and Nvidia are claiming that Intel is trying to hijack the specification. … Read more

Nvidia confirmed Friday that it has acquired RayScale, a small company that develops ray-tracing technology. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Ray tracing has been mentioned frequently by Intel over the last six months. An Intel blog titled "Real Time Ray-Tracing: The End of Rasterization?" and later comments by Intel executives that the company is looking at doing ray tracing on its processors set the stage for debate on the viability of ray tracing in mainstream gaming.

PC graphics technology today uses rasterization. (A discussion of ray tracing vs. rasterization.)

Ray Tracing is a technique … Read more

For those who play PC games (and please count me in), the most expensive and necessary investment has always been the graphics card (also known as the GPU, graphics processing unit). High-end cards, from either ATI or nVidia, can cost $500 and up. That's not even factoring in the case, cooling system, power supply, etc., which also have to be equally high-end to support the increasingly large and power-hungry graphics cards. And there seems to be no end to all this. Or is there?

At IDF 2007, there was a demo running Quake 4. There wasn't much to … Read more